I could not believe what I was watching... in fact, I remember forgetting that I was even watching My Little Pony. It definitely was not what I remember as a kid. The creators took something so girly and made it easily accessible for everyone.
My reaction was: Huh...it really is as good as they said...sweet. I finally have something to watch on Saturday's again! lol. And a year later I'm still watching it religiously, and still a major Brony.
I think my first reaction(s) was, "lots of bright colors, nice" and "hmm, the pink one is pretty talkative".
I was like... this not bad. I'm happy that kids get to watch something that is mentally engaging, I now have hope for the future generations. But I was meh. I predicted the whole plot by the prologue. What interested me was HOW the plot was told.
I remember my first episode. It was "A bird in the hoof". Why? I shall tell you. From the beginning. The first time I heard of My Little Pony was when my little sisters watched the G3 ponies. I hated them so much. Partially because I was a middle school boy, and I was obliged to hate anything girly, but partially because it really was sickeningly girly. I remember only a little bit, but I remember Rainbow Dash and Rarity were completely different from FiM. Even Rarity, my least favorite pony, is better than any of the G3's. Then, fast forward 5 years. I'm in High School, my friend (who is known for her strange tastes in media) asks me if I've heard of MLP. I say, "Yes. I hate it. Why?" Despite this reaction, she tells me I should look into the "new" MLP, which is "much better". I must say, my curiosity was piqued. This was strange, even for her. Why would she recommend it to me if there wasn't something different about it? I didn't end up watching it the first time. But the next day at school, when she found out I hadn't tried it, she urged me again to watch, and I did when I got home from school. I just typed in "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" into youtube. "A bird in the hoof" was the first one to come up, so I watched that one. I originally thought it was "meh". It was better than G3, for sure, but not good enough for me to become addicted. But, for some reason, I watched another one. I think I just wanted to see the first episode to get some background, since in the one I watched it referred to the Princess having met her other friends, and I wanted to see, you know, just how it all started. 2nd episode: Well, that was boring. Better watch part two, though. 3rd episode: That was awesome! Next. 4th episode: Wait...do I actually like this? 5th episode: Aaaaaaaaah! Help meeee! I'm ruinneeed!!! Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I liked it. Eventually. :derpe:
Hmm, well my first experience with MLP wasn’t the first episode. But when I did finally watch it I was along the lines of “Huh. Ok, lets give this a chance.” As for my first experience with content from the show. Picture it, central California, 2012. A young man sits at his computer after a long day of job hunting. He cracks open a soda, pops on a You-Tube video for background noise, and loads up World of Warcraft, to lose himself for a short wile, away from the lonely and dark night creeping in. After an hour of randomly clicking the recommended videos and finding only dreck and cat videos, he clicks one and tabs back over to WoW, only to be confused and bewildered as a cheery tune begins to play. He lets it go, then the singing starts, a happy, upbeat song that he does not recognize but can’t help but to like! Then the full on song starts, and his mind is blown. He quickly tabs back to You-Tube to see a little pink pony bopping a colorful cartoon town, singing “Smile smile smile!”
I had never even heard of FiM or "bronies" until recently when my sister, her husband, and I attended the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention this year. There was a panel there called "My Little Brony." A quick google search revealed something along the lines of "males in the 15 - 40 age range who are obsessed with My Little Pony." Well, I have a niece who used to make me watch My Little Pony Tales with her, and so it didn't take us long to form a consensus on the whole brony thing: "creepy guys who watch a terrible cartoon for little girls." Of course, we went nowhere near the panel, although now I am regretting that and am hoping this year's Geek Media Expo in Tennessee has something FiM related. My curiosity being what it is, though, I couldn't help being fascinated by the idea of thousands of grown men watching an extended toy commercial about multi-colored ponies. So, when I found out all the fuss was about a NEW MLP cartoon that had apparently started in 2010, I taped an episode on the SD Hub station (which makes the show look awful on my HDTV, but we don't get the HD Hub station) intent on ridiculing it. The episode I watched was Stare Master. I wasn't terribly impressed with it, but I was very taken with how adorable the yellow pegasus was (how many men has Fluttershy ensnared with her adorableness besides me?). I then proceeded to watch the first episode on Youtube. I wasn't super-impressed with the first episode either, but something kept me watching. Eventually I started spending all of my free time, away from the responsibilities of work and family, watching the show. This didn't go unnoticed by the family, of course, and I fended off any wry teasing about it by insisting that "of course, I'll never, ever be a 'brony.'" Well, three weeks later, when my hypnotic fixation with the series had lessened somewhat, I discovered that I'd watched every episode of the series multiple times, had pony wallpapers on my desktop and cell phone, had a Fluttershy toy sitting on my bookshelf, had mp3s of all the songs listed in my phone's music player, had gotten my 3 year old nephew addicted to the show, and had half my family grinning and calling me a Brony several times a day now. Ooops.
The answer: Too many! Twilight Sparkle is best pony! -insert meme here that reads "The number of bronies seduced by Fluttershy is too darn high!"-
Hard to say. Fluttershy is definitely the cutest. Pinkie Pie is easily the funniest. Rarity has an appeal for me that I don't quite understand yet. Twilight is probably my favorite overall, if only because we're so darn alike in so many ways. Can't say I care much for Rainbow Dash, to be honest.
Eeyup, same; Twilight is a LOT like me. Of course, the others are each a little like me too, even Rarity, who is my least favorite of the mane 6 (not that I hate her, the others are all just better.) But I think that Twilight can be funny, DEFINITELY cute, and is overall the best pony. (Yes, I do think she is cuter than Fluttershy.)
Rarity is very unlike me, but I do have to say, the way she relates to her sister disturbingly reminds me of how I am with my nephew sometimes, with whom I very much have a big brother-little brother relationship. As a result, Sisterhooves Social hit home in a really powerful way. Twilight is great in terms of very consciously trying to be the best pony she can be. As a result, she will, say, help Princess Luna when everyone else shuns her. Watching the episodes where she's trying to explain something to the other ponies also brings back unpleasant memories of me trying to explain my paper on Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to my very baffled eighth-grade English teacher when she asked us to read and report on a non-fiction book we liked. Of course, back then, the book WAS difficult to read if only because the only English language edition available back then was riddled with hideous typographical errors that made following some of the author's arguments confusing, but the book itself was fantastic and was still worth reading. I really need to get the supposedly improved edition of the book that was released last year, I think. Still think Fluttershy wins on cuteness, however. Of course, as with most opinions on personal taste, YMMV.
Looked up that book...seems like some deep stuff. I would actually look further into it, but I just got done having a...er..."debate" with someone else, and my brain wants a break from thinking too hard. I'll take calculus over philosophy right now. It's kind of creepy how much Twilight can resemble me. I've watched her do things, and as I did, I thought, "Hey...I do that too!!" As I said, kinda unnerving. All of my friends agree that it's like a freak coincidence, cause not only are things like her large vocabulary, love for books, and previous antisocial tendencies EXACTLY like mine, but her personality is like mine too; she worries too much, she's out to please everypony, and she pounds herself into the ground for one little mistake, not realizing what others would give to have gotten as far as she had with whatever it was that she messed up on. Also, she's so adorable in that nerdy kind of way! So yeah. She is both my favorite pony, and the one that I am most like.
It's not too bad. The worst part is, of course, all of the technical terminology, which the French Phenomenologists LOVE. I love the book because it confirmed for me a suspicion I have always had about the nature of humanity and allowed me to understand why I always thought there was something plainly wrong about the idea of a 'soul' or states of consciousness that have no co-extensive physical correlate. But on the other hand... PONIES!!! Yeah, Twilight also shares my love of astronomy, my non-aggressive anti-social nature (not so much "I HATE PEOPLE," but rather "why would I want to go talk to friends when there is a very lovely book on the civil war sitting home just calling my name?"), and an uncanny ability to worry over things that seem silly to others. Maybe it is a personality archetype that can fit many people, such as us? Where does Twilight fit on the Myers-Briggs type scale?
I was like, "WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL MY LIFE!? I NEED TO WATCH MOOOOOOOOOORE!" I first saw it on iTunes, and I was like, "why not?" so I got it and I got hooked instantly.
"...WHYYYYYY?" I honestly couldn't make it all the way through the first episode the first time. I couldn't stand all the happy and colors, but I liked Spike and Twilight was voiced by Tara Strong, so I was like, "Eh, just the first episode." Then it ended with a cliff hanger, so I went on to the second episode, and kinda started thinking, "Well, got nothing better to do..." Griffin the Brush Off was when I first realized I started to really like the show, then Feeling Pinkie Keen made me fall in love with it.
First I was like, "Do I Have too?" And my friend was like, "Yeah, you do you lost the bet." Then I saw the theme I was like, "KILL ME!" I watched the first too I wasn't exactly blown away, then I did double or nothing with my friend in thumb wrestling and I lost so I had to watch the rest of season 1 and I was like "NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" But on episode 7, I was like "AWESOME! PONIEZ KICKING DRAGONZ!" My view on the episodes I already watched changed.
